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Game ideas: Open Source MMO Revised
I once saw a Game Idea posted on GPWiki for an open source mmorpg, basically an uneducated user wanting an OpenID equivalent for MMO games (though it’s not exactly what this user said), while that in itself is a noteworthy idea, which commercial developers should look into, and will not be discussed here, the title of the post is what got me ticking. An open source MMO, this very concept is ground-shattering, and I don’t believe it’s been done (well) before (you have to pay for servers some how, which brings me to another point, just because it’s open source and available to anyone, doesn’t mean there cant be a subscription fee to play). Ignoring the security liabilities of seeing how the game ticks, and introduction of faking data and cheating (can always have an external closed source encryption system), this concept must simply be put into action. Now mind you, MMO’s are quite popular with large people following a well established MMO (good graphics, good game play, good substance, reliable servers), an MMO by it’s very nature is social, so it is given that interest in such a project would exponentially increase as it got better, so, updates and daily patches would be quite frustrating if required to play the game. This can be countered with a control system, after a period of time, there would be an established team of main programmers and artists (contributing new art – 3D models, music, etc wouldn’t be as big of an issue as contributing to the source), who could look at user-submitted contributions to the current source, and approve/authorise/adapt it to the main source. Having weekly… or better yet, fortnightly updates to the game, would be ideal, as new content, and changes could be added, not only that, but just being under scrutiny of the general public, would afford the game engine to become more efficient, with issues and exploits spotted and ironed out, instead of sneakily being left in. The basic idea is that the game world could expand as fast as the user base, as well ast that the game would evolve over time, with continual improvements to every aspect of the game (the art, the audio, the graphics engine, the physics engine, player interaction etc), which means that the game would not become old and dated, it would continue to evolve as if alive, and would eliminate the need of starting a new similar game from scratch (or somewhat from scratch). Another thought that has occurred to me, is to use the concept of distributed computing, but apply it to servers, though a version control mechanism must be built in to make sure 3rd party servers are up to date with the current version, to help reduce lag, you could have servers run by volunteers who put up a box etc, that talks to the main server to get a list of all other servers neat itself, it then links to the servers around and distributes load between themselves for local-ish players to help reduce lag, these servers continue to link around themselves to the servers nearest to them, until the cluster reaches the entire country, and eventually back to main nominated servers, brilliant idea, the concept could also be built into the clients themselves. I hope this has been enlightening for you. Athiril Athiril 02:56, 13 Nov 2006 (East Australian Standard Time) Planeshift is an attempt at an Open Source RPG. It's been in development for 5 years and could really do with some more developers. It's in playable Alpha stage now. As far as subscription goes, there's a few more options: # Closed-source server, open-source client # Open source server with characters/accounts created through web interface after credit card details have been exchanged etc. There are a few gotchas: # Graphic/Story content might not be open source even if the code is (see Planeshift). # If the server is open-source, there is nothing stopping another group of people creating their own servers and charging less unless the non-code content is not open-source. Perhaps code-contributors could get a few free months of gameplay? See also * Game ideas: Open Source MMORPG